Collision Rates in Charged Granular Gases
Abstract
The dissipation rate due to inelastic collisions between equally charged, insulating particles in a granular gas is calculated. It is equal to the known dissipation rate for uncharged granular media multiplied by a Boltzmann-like factor, that originates from Coulomb repulsion. Particle correlations lead to an effective potential that replaces the bare Coulomb potential in the Boltzmann factor. Collisional cooling in a granular gas proceeds with the known t^-2 -law, until the kinetic energy of the grains becomes smaller than the Coulomb barrier. Then the granular temperature approaches a time dependence proportional to 1/ln(t). If the particles have different charges of equal sign, the collision rate can always be lowered by redistributing the charge, until all particles carry the same charge. Finally granular flow through a vertical pipe is briefly discussed. All results are confirmed by computer simulations.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0208288,
title = {Collision Rates in Charged Granular Gases},
author = {T. Scheffler and D. E. Wolf},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0208288},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
Submitted to "Granular Matter"